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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22536631">The grotesqueries of love</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov'>Baryshnikov</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Crossing the red-stained veil [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Dark, Horrific love, Injury, M/M, Moral Decay, Morality, Possessive Tom Riddle, Sensual horror, True Love, consensual cannibalism, sensual violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 13:22:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,103</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22536631</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Without humanity, love was free to show its monstrous face.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harry Potter/Tom Riddle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Crossing the red-stained veil [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1520894</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>71</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The grotesqueries of love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Well... this happened.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tom swallowed, his eyes tracing the curious patterns on the ceiling; just artistic designs leftover from a more unrestrained era when lines were drawn for the sake of lines and no one cared for the motivations or intentions behind their actions. </p><p>To be free of such self-doubt was to be free of humanity. </p><p>For humanity itself, this great, prized possession of humankind, was nothing more than a potent concoction of restraint, self-doubt, and morality, and as soon as those were abandoned, stripped off from the human form as one might strip off their clothes, then true freedom could be achieved. </p><p>The chance to show the real face that sat behind the mask of decency. </p><p>Tom sighed and turned his eyes away from the ceiling. Instead, he focussed on the weight that lay beside him. Harry was already watching him, smiling in that slightly lopsided way that people who are afraid to be happy tend to adopt. But Harry wasn’t afraid anymore, not since he’d peeled off the restraint and self-doubt and morality.</p><p>Now he was free. </p><p>As if to emphasise the fact, Harry raised his hand up from his side and brushed his fingers through Tom’s hair; such a light gesture, romantic even with the softness of the touch just grazing against his skin. At that, Tom raised his own hand and closed it around Harry’s, shifting more onto his side as he did so, just so he could lie closer to him.</p><p>So close that the heat of their bodies combined and nothing else in the world mattered.</p><p>“Tell me again what you want to do to me,” Harry murmured; his mouth so close that Tom could taste every word. He smiled. There were so many things that Tom had already done, and yet the list that he wanted to do never seemed to get any shorter, for when one lovely act was crossed off, another one slid into its place, and thus there was a never-ending cycle of constant renewal. </p><p>Though some might call it mutation if they knew the specifics. </p><p>If they knew the horrific acts that love would become when love was left to fester with the faces behind the masks. When love was planted, and humanity was absent, the results were as alien as they were beautiful; most people who saw those acts would not call them love, they would look on in abhorrence and call it an abomination.</p><p>A genuine atrocity.</p><p>The great poisoning of something so sacrosanct, and yet, that wasn’t what it was. Love without restraint, and love without self-doubt, and love without morality, was still love. It was still like climbing flowers, pretty and fragrant, sprawling everywhere they could and consuming the space and the sun and water; they were just a different species.  </p><p>Tom swallowed again, he’d been thinking of this moment for so long now that the words burned at the back of his mouth, threatening to corrode a hole if they weren’t spoken soon. Now was the time to speak; to share once again the darkest, more degenerate, parts of love. “I want to eat you,” he said softly, looking into Harry’s eyes and letting the words catching on the edge of his tongue so that they made his entire mouth feel dirty. “I want to open you up so slow.”</p><p>Harry continued to watch, the black centre of those eyes of his, spreading wider with each word. But there was no horror inside them, and no revulsion because they were free of humanity and of the things that made them feel shame for what they wanted. </p><p>“I want,” Tom continued, “to get my fingers inside you.” As he said it, he squeezed Harry’s hand, the pads of his fingers pressing down on the sharp tips of his knuckles and holding him steady. “And I want to eat you, Harry,” he murmured, still soft and low like it was a confession before the Lord.</p><p>But there was no Lord worthy of this confession.</p><p>There were just men and the monsters that hid behind their eyes. </p><p>Even so, Tom didn’t miss the sound of breath catching on the backs of Harry’s teeth, nor did he miss the stuttering of his movements, that slight squirm of childish eagerness, and flickers of excitement that lay so undisguisable behind his eyes. Without humanity, this kind of love could be appreciated, adored even, as it should be.</p><p>Tom leaned forward then, pushing Harry onto his back and lazily climbing on top of him. It barely took a minute before he was mouthing at Harry’s neck, tasting the natural musk of his skin along with the chemical undertone that lingered from his cologne. It was a taste that Tom just wanted to wrap his tongue around, dig into it like it were a physical object and swallow it whole.</p><p>He would never tire of hungering for that scent. </p><p>Nor would Harry ever tire of giving it to him. They had done this a thousand times before, and yet now, Harry still tilted his head to the side and exhaled all long and slow, relaxing back and just letting Tom take what he wanted because he trusted him to take his pleasures in the equal measures that he would give them.</p><p>Because love was supposed to be an equilibrium.</p><p>A meeting point of two souls.</p><p>But there was no time to dwell where that point lay because an impatience was building itself up under Tom’s skin. It always started like this, a stinging craving in the very base of his stomach, that just began to ache, and ache, and ache. A scratching in the lining of his blood vessels that burned from the inside out and made him do things quicker than he should.   </p><p>So, Tom pressed down onto Harry’s body as though they could blur into each other and become one single entity that people would call a grotesque specimen of human depravity, but only because they didn’t understand the true meaning of love. They would only recoil at the sight of two people so deeply intertwined that their skin melted into one, and their bones fused together because they themselves had never been so overwhelmed by feelings for another.  </p><p>But they didn’t coalesce because that was beyond the capabilities of their human frames. All that happened was Harry sunk deeper into the duvet; his skin, and his hair, and even his eyes dark when contrasted to the shocking white that enveloped them.</p><p>Everything on this bed was white, from the sheets to the duvet, even the pillows and the bedspread were this painful white, as though everyone here knew the dissoluteness of their souls and was trying to pull them back towards some kind of salvation. It made Tom smile to think of the chambermaid smoothing down the covers, her hands resting on the whiteness and not realising quite what a hedonistic act of self-indulgent adoration was about to happen on them.</p><p>When they were done, there would barely be a spot of white to be seen. </p><p>Instead, there would be a hundred shades of red and brown and black like the patchwork of fields with freshly ploughed soil. Colours that were rich and dark and decadent, colours that got his heart thumping and his hands feeling hotter against Harry’s skin. </p><p>Harry was looking at him again now, shamelessly admiring him. There were a hundred thoughts in his head, Tom could feel them flitting past, never staying long enough to be materialised into coherence but always enough to leave behind the imprint of a feeling. So many feelings hung heavy around his neck, but some were stronger than others, and anticipation hung the heaviest. </p><p>It pulsed in Harry’s head and down in the artery of his neck, yet it did not stop there, rather, that glorious anticipation spread itself through Harry like stitches through a suit. Without him being conscious of it, it throbbed in his wrists and played a tune at the corner of his mouth, even his tongue was imbued with an anticipation as it licked his lips.</p><p>And Tom couldn’t bear to deny him. </p><p>The first bite was dull. The sort of pressure that normal love could achieve when it wanted; it created nothing more than a weak ache and it satisfied none of the burning inside Tom’s lungs, nor the squirming anticipation in Harry’s muscles. But it made him feel like such a tease to do it; to simply feel Harry contort beneath him, shifting his neck in an attempt to find the angle that would connect teeth with skin, and spill out all the contents of human beings.</p><p>The bites got harder. </p><p>And harder. </p><p>Until there was blood, trickling at first and then flowing like Tom had attached a spile to a maple tree and was now reaping his reward. A thick, sticky reward that coloured the tips of his teeth, slicked his fingers, drawing red streaks that were hazed out by the lines of his palms.</p><p>Tom didn’t stop. </p><p>He couldn’t stop. </p><p>Not with the taste of blood spreading over his tongue, coating his mouth with this membrane of human insides. The most intimate parts of people, of <em>Harry</em>, was here for his own horrific consumption, and his own horrific consumption alone. No one else got to be so close to Harry’s skin, no one else knew the intimate nuances of his flavour or his texture as parts of him slid down their throat. </p><p>Simply, no one would ever be as close to him as Tom was now. </p><p>Perhaps, if one described the act in the most rudimentary terms: eating another human being while they still breathed, then the disgust of others could be understood. But it was misplaced. That disgust should be directed at all those people who could never live this out; the ones that were so caught up in the web of their own morality that they couldn’t indulge in such brutal love.</p><p>And it <em>was</em> brutal.</p><p>Harry’s half-desperate groans would confirm that. Those terribly beautiful sounds that so few people ever got to hear, because, without hearing it for oneself, the sounds of flesh being pulled out of bodies with human teeth, couldn’t be imagined; nor could the noises of orgiastic suffering that people make when parts of them are being eaten before their eyes be described. </p><p>Tom swallowed hard, feeling the weight of someone else in his throat. Human flesh was hotter than anything he’d ever eaten, and wetter, and so much sweeter than anyone ever expected it to be, after all, they did not appreciate that this was the very incarnation of love itself, and one’s lover was the sweetest thing in the world. </p><p>It was overwhelming enough that he had to pull himself away just to breathe.</p><p>Looking over the scene was like finding the artistic value in a massacre. There was blood everywhere, sticky and red, oozing between the creases of the duvet like lipstick left out in the sun. Just tracts and trails that he couldn’t help but dip his fingers into, tracing patterns into the fabric as he watched Harry squirm and groan, raising his own fingers up to his neck just to feel at the wet, dripping mess that his own body had become. The touch was so tentative and tantalising as it explored the edges of his muscles and down to the bones still frayed with meat that Tom had to push Harry’s hand away in order to get another taste.</p><p>Of course, there was always a line where the acts of love couldn’t be undone, at least, for most of humanity such a line would be the definite parameter between the acceptable and the appalling. But magic was a curious thing, and it blurred out that distinction like fog blurs out the horizon.</p><p>With magic, there was no end to the continuous renewal and no end to the monstrosities of love.</p><p>Which was why Tom’s fingers left behind the ripped edges of human flesh and stretches of exposed bone that had whetted his appetite, and instead, trailed them lower down Harry’s throat and over his sternum before coming to rest at the hollow of his ribs. There lay the centre of the human body and the supposed location of the precious soul. Beneath his bloody fingers Tom could feel the warmth of Harry’s skin, and rapidity of his breathing as he appreciated what was to come, after all, if their human frames were to deny them the connections that their love so craved, that connection would have to be forged through the closest conduit available…</p><p>Complete consumption.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I have to apologise for this absolute monstrosity.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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